


The Freshman Essay

by LuxKen27



Category: California Diaries - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Diary/Journal, Female Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 13:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 7,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3449564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuxKen27/pseuds/LuxKen27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jill Henderson reflects on her traumatic eighth grade year for the annual Freshman Essay at Vista.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. September 8

**Author's Note:**

  * For [isquinnabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isquinnabel/gifts).



> Written for Isabelquinn for the 2015 _California Diaries_ Fic Exchange. You can't imagine my excitement when I received your prompts as my assignment for this exchange, only to realize that our #1 requests were for the exact same thing - Jill Henderson fic! She definitely deserved better than to be shoved off the canvas in the CA Diaries. I hope you enjoy my take on her side of the story, and what was happening behind the scenes of the events in the other characters' diaries.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta snarky_imp (Siryn) for the suggestions, corrections, and feedback. Any mistakes that made it through are totally on me.
> 
> Further author's notes can be found [here](http://luxken27.dreamwidth.org/758176.html).

9/8 – Friday afternoon, on the bus ride home

It finally came today, the assignment I’ve been dreading since the start of school: the infamous Freshman Essay. All of the ninth-grade teachers are notorious for the assignment, but it’s never given at the same time any given semester. It’s a nasty little surprise they like to spring on us unsuspecting freshmen, and I guess, in a way, I’m happy that it’s happening sooner rather than later.

The Freshman Essay. I remember Liz moaning about it back in the day, and I remember never understanding why she disliked it so much. It’s a pretty simple assignment, after all: just a simple little retrospective about the past year, as recounted by the journal we were required to keep as Vista students. I remember thinking that the autobiographies the eighth-grade students had to write would be a much more intimidating task, but Liz had survived – and even _enjoyed_ – that assignment. I’d even helped her decorate the cover of her book with seashells.

Suddenly, though, the Freshman Essay happened and she’d practically fallen to pieces. Such drama over one silly writing assignment. What could possibly be so horrible about it?

Well, now I know, because now I have to do it.

And there’s no way in the world I want to have to go back and read the journals I kept in eighth grade. It’s cruel and unusual punishment to have to re-live that horrible period of my life. I’ve spent so much time trying to forget about it that it feels like ripping open a wound. SO WHAT if it’s supposed to be an introspective exercise, designed to help us think critically about our pasts and how we record the events that happen to us in real time? SO WHAT?!?! Don’t these teachers **_care_** that this is a really traumatic thing to ask us to do, and FOR A GRADE, NO LESS?

No. No, they don’t.

And there’s nothing we can do about it. There’s nothing _I_ can do about it, except suck it up and try to get through it.

I think I’m going to throw up.

~*~

9/8 – Friday evening, after dinner

So, confession time: I hate being forced to keep a journal.

It hasn’t always been this way. We start in kindergarten at Vista, and it’s actually kind of fun. We don’t write in it, exactly – it’s more like a collage of things we do in kindergarten, you know, pictures and scribbles and assignments. My kindergarten journals are these big sketchbooks my dad used to bring home for us, and all kinds of things are pasted in them. 

The other journals from elementary school are similar. Mine are Lisa Frank notebooks with the bright and colorful covers. We had little writing assignments, starting in first grade. I also have collages in mine, too, just because I enjoyed making them. I know my friends did, too, because we’d help each other and exchange things to put in them. It’s actually how Maggie and I became friends – she let me borrow her silver glitter pen in first grade. I made a cover for her journal out of black construction paper, including a big silver glitter heart right in the center with her name in my best cursive handwriting. She loved it. We started playing together every day at recess, and then after school, and soon we became inseparable.

When we started fifth grade, we moved to the middle school building at Vista, and we had to start using those black-and-white marble composition books for our journals. It was the first time our teachers would collect them for grades. We had to do writing assignments for English, so we had to keep a separate journal for those, but most people kept private journals as well, including me. It was a fun way to chronicle my life.

Until life started to suck, at least.

I stopped the private journal when my parents separated, and then divorced. It was too painful to write down all the stuff that was happening, and I knew I’d never want to go back and read it and just bring all that stuff back, so I just…stopped. It was easy enough to keep the journal for English because we still had those writing prompts, and eventually I did pick up the private journal again after life settled down. I starting keeping lists of things – books I’d read, movies I’d seen, collections I’d started – and it was fun to go back and look over them and see what I’d accomplished over the course of a year. I can go back and look over them and pick out things I’m particularly proud of. For example, by the end of seventh grade, I had fifty bottles of nail polish and I’d used all of them at least once. My favorite was Tickled Pink, a 99c Wet n Wild Wild Shine that I wore practically all summer.

When I started baby-sitting, I’d use my journal to keep up with my jobs and write down important stuff that my clients would tell me, and things I’d want to remember about the kids I baby-sat for. Most of my journals from 7th grade are about the We ♥ Kids Club, my nail polish collection, and all of the places I’d gone surfing. All of it was personal, but none of it was private, I guess. I never took it with me to school, but I can’t say I’d care if someone found it and read it. I had no secrets.

And it was supposed to be that way, all the way through eighth grade (and the autobiography assignment). It wasn’t until we started high school in ninth grade that the writing assignments stopped and we’d have to keep introspective journals for English class, which we’d eventually have to write the dreaded Freshman Essay about.

That was the way it was _supposed to be_ , but that isn’t the way it happened. Because my class got moved to the high school building in eighth grade. Which means we had to start keep introspective journals an entire year earlier than every other class that had ever gone through Vista, which means there’s a LOT more fodder for the Freshman Essay than everyone else has had.

Which means, like it or not, I’m having to write about all the painful stuff I went through in eighth grade. Which means I now have to go back and look at it and re-live it and write about it all over again. 

It used to be that the Freshman Essay happened later in the year, after a few months at least, but this year it came in the very first freaking week of the semester. We have until midterms to work on it, but I’m already dreading it. When Mr. Sandstone announced it in class this morning, my stomach dropped like a stone, and I’ve been feeling sick over it ever since.

I don’t want to do it, but I guess I have to. The sooner I do it, the sooner it’s over with and the sooner I can leave my past behind. I hope.


	2. September 9

9/9 – Saturday afternoon

Things I loved in7th grade:  
Baby-sitting  
Horses  
Surfing  
Nail polish  
My pups  
Hanging out with my best friends (the We ♥ Kids Club!)

Things I loved in 8th grade:  
Surfing  
Nail polish  
My pups

 

I looked back at my first journal from last year. It wasn’t as painful as I’d anticipated, except for how naïve I was. My first clue that something was wrong should’ve been when the We ♥ Kids Club just sort of…stopped. At the time, it was understandable. Everyone was going through something, and the club just didn’t seem that important by comparison. Dawn’s father had just married a woman she’d never really liked very much. Sunny’s mother was dying of lung cancer. And Maggie….

Maggie concerned me. She’s always had problems with being the daughter of a celebrity. She’s never felt comfortable with that world (personally, I don’t know why, because I think it’d be fabulous to be so amazingly wealthy and well-connected), and she’s always been suspicious that people only liked her because of her father. A bit of that started at the end of 7th grade. When the We ♥ Kids Club became local celebrities with a big spread in the paper, she became the most popular baby-sitter in the club. Turns out people were pounding down her door for a chance to get in with her father, and that really bugged her.

And changed her. I didn’t see much of her that summer, but right before school started back, I remember feeling very surprised the first time I went over to her house to hang out with her. It was like she’d made a conscious decision to transform herself into a completely different person. Gone were the punk clothes and the multicolored hair and the laid-back, carefree attitude. Suddenly she was very preppy and uptight and all concerned about making good grades and just keeping her head down. At first, I really liked it. I’d always been the quietest member of the W ♥ KC, the least stylish, the boring one. Maggie looked more like me than I’d ever seen, and we’d been friends for most of our lives. It gave me a bit of hope. As eighth graders, we would finally be the big fish in the little pond, and she was one of the coolest people in our class, so if she went to school dressed like me….

She did. And it was _awesome_.

But it only lasted all of a month, because that’s when Vista made the horrendous decision to move the eighth grade class to the high school building, and suddenly we were high-schoolers. We were the minnows, in the great big sea, which was full of sharks and piranhas. 

I was petrified. Even thinking about it now makes my stomach feel weak. I remember going home the day of the assembly and just crying my eyes out. I didn’t want to be in the high school building. I didn’t want to deal with all of those big, scary-looking, practically ADULT students or the principal or the guidance counselors or even the teachers. I wanted to be in the tiny, safe, comfortable middle school building with the same teachers I’d had for the last three years and the same kids I’d been with since kindergarten. So many kids transfer to Vista in high school because so many of its graduates get into prestigious colleges.

I wasn’t ready for any of that. But apparently my friends were.

Ugh, this is making me sick. I’d better stop before I make myself upset again.


	3. September 12

9/12 – Tuesday morning, homeroom

I guess I’m the only one who’s genuinely upset about the Freshman Essay. When I got to English yesterday, I was momentarily heartened to hear other kids complaining about it, until I actually started listening to what they were saying. Everybody’s moaning about the amount of work that they’ll have to put in it. Only I seem to be upset about having to re-live the trauma of eighth grade.

I’m not surprised. I guess I’m getting used to feeling isolated from everyone else. I’ve certainly had enough practice at it.

~*~

9/12 – Tuesday night

I cracked the second of my eighth grade journals this evening. God, reading about that slumber party made me cry all over again. My friends had changed, so much, in such a short period of time. I still can’t believe that Sunny actually _got drunk_ that night and barfed all over our flower garden. I knew she was having a hard time with her mom’s awful treatments and all, but she’d become such a cold and distant person. She was so mean and cruel, and she seemed to take pleasure in my fear. I couldn’t forgive her for her behavior that night. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. First the navel ring, and then the outrageous clothes, and her cruel sarcasm, and then that. She could’ve really gotten me – _all of us_ – into a lot of trouble. And she actually _did_ get into trouble with Mrs. Kruger because of that party, sort of. That party sank all of us, even those of us who weren’t even there. It wasn’t fair that we were all punished because of it.

It was months before I got over that. Sunny still isn’t speaking to me, but that’s not a surprise.

What’s surprising is how much of a bitch she still is towards me, even though I’m persona non grata to her. It makes me wonder if she ever liked me, or if she simply tolerated me for some reason? Maybe because I was Maggie’s friend?

Dawn had more of a right to be angry at me. I swear I didn’t mean to spill the beans about Carol’s pregnancy, but how I was I supposed to know that it was a secret?! I’d never before heard of a woman keeping a pregnancy a secret, outside of Mom’s soap operas at least. It’s not like she did anything _shameful_ …I think. I mean, Carol’s married to Mr. Schafer, and had been for a while – long enough that there was no question about who the father of her baby could be. I guess. I mean, I didn’t know if something was going on in their marriage. Dawn had been on edge about Carol from the beginning of the relationship, and I guess my mistake was the straw that broke the camel’s back for her. We’ve made up since then – I congratulated her on becoming a big sister again after Carol’s baby was born, and she accepted the gift I gave her and the hug I offered – but we’re not exactly friends anymore.

At least she doesn’t go out of her way to be mean to me like Sunny still does.

All of that was bad enough, but what hurt the most was when Maggie and I started drifting apart.

We’d always been best friends, and we’d _always_ been loyal to each other above all, but she started taking Sunny’s and Dawn’s side against me more and more, like she thought they were so cool and I was just a big baby. She and Amalia Vargas started hanging out after that party at Mrs. Kruger’s house, and it was like…slowly but surely, Amalia replaced me as Maggie’s best friend. Maggie ate lunch with her, and went over to her house, and started a band with Amalia’s boyfriend. It happened so slowly that I didn’t realize it until she was almost totally gone.

Oh, God, I’m crying again. See what I mean about not wanting to re-live this??


	4. September 17

9/17 – Sunday evening, after dinner

I haven’t written in awhile because I haven’t felt like it. I’ve been re-reading my journals from last year, and there’s no need to recount every little detail here. I’ve been distracting myself instead. I took a baby-sitting job for Clover and Daffodil Austin one evening. (I’m saving up for a new wetsuit.) I’ve spent almost every afternoon at the beach, trying to get in as much surfing time as I can before the water gets too cold. I finally found the nerve to go into the surf rental place and have the wetsuit I want put on hold. The guy tried to talk me into signing up for the surfing contest they’re holding in a couple of weeks, but I declined. I do this to relax, not compete.

Maggie and I went to the mall this afternoon. We had lunch, just by ourselves, before meeting Ducky and Amalia for a movie at the dollar matinee. They were showing some old Russian art film about God and eating graham crackers, or something. It was odd, but Ducky kept us in stitches with his running commentary.

I’m glad they’ve become my friends, even if they’re still more Maggie’s friends than mine. They’ve never really invited me to do anything with them, per se, but I feel comfortable with them when we’re all together in a big group. Mostly I’m just glad that Maggie’s my best friend again. After last year, I wasn’t sure that we’d ever find our way back to each other.


	5. September 18

9/18 – Monday morning, study hall

“The hardest thing about eighth grade was losing my best friend.”

I think that’s going to be the opening line of my essay. It’s true – the hardest thing about eighth grade was losing my best friend. It wasn’t any one thing, like the bust up of the W ♥ KC, or the fight I had with Dawn about Carol, or even Sunny freezing me out. Maggie was drifting away from me, and I was clinging to her to prevent it from happening, and it was just such a strain that it almost ended our friendship for good.

I was worried about her, but I didn’t know how to tell her because our dynamic had changed so much. Once upon a time I could drop by her house uninvited (or vice versa), I could tell her my secrets, and I could speak plainly with her. We were on the same wavelength, so much so that it was almost as if we were sharing a brain. But ever since that party at Mrs. Kruger’s, something had changed. I felt like I had to walk on eggshells around her just like I did with everyone else, and I was so, so jealous of her friendship with Amalia. I tried a couple of times to insert myself into their friendship – like I’d try to talk to them in the halls between classes, or sit with them at lunch – but they closed me out, and that really hurt. And like a fool, I kept trying. I went to the Vanish gigs, and even stopped by their open rehearsals every now and then. I saw what was happening to the band, and to Maggie in particular, but I felt completely helpless to stop it.

It was hard for me to see my best friend in pain, and Maggie had a really rough stretch last year where she was too hard on herself – about her grades, her appearance, _everything_. She stopped eating, and she got really thin and pale and it was really, really alarming. I tried to approach her about it once or twice, but always chickened out. After being on the losing end in my conversations with Dawn and Sunny, I didn’t want to screw up again. So anytime I talked to her, it was about superficial stuff, like the weather or movies or homework or whatever. It was my way of lending my support.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t have other friends. Even though I felt isolated from the friends I’d had most of my life, I wasn’t completely alone, thank goodness. I found other friends who still cared about the stuff I cared about (like books and nail polish and puppies). I started sitting with Peg and Terri and Jenn at lunch. My locker was next to Peg’s, which is actually how we met. She noticed the Puppy Pals that I was making for my friends at the beginning of the school year, and she thought it was a really cool idea. She made one for me, which was surprising and sweet. She introduced me to her circle of friends. They were just as into collections as I was – dogs were only the beginning. They also adored horses and teddy bears and Lisa Frank notebooks. They really dug my sneakers with the pony tails, and they went and got crayon sweatshirts like mine. Most of all, none of them wanted to be high-schoolers, either, and that basically cemented our bond. We all banded together in order to face the world we didn’t want but had been forced into.

But as much as I liked them and enjoyed their company, none of them could replace Maggie. The great thing is, none of them tried. They all knew about my friendship with her and they were all super supportive of it. They were sort of in awe of her, truth be told. Which felt a little weird to me, but I was so used to being on the fringes of Maggie’s world that I’d never had to look at it like an outsider before.

Oops, there’s the bell – more later.


	6. September 21

9/21 – Thursday evening, after dinner

I’ve finished all of my homework, but I’ve been putting off this dumb essay as long as I can. Its due in three weeks, which means I need to start working on it…which means I have to keep reading my journals from last year. I just picked one at random this time, opened it to a random page and closed my eyes, jabbing my finger at a random point. It doesn’t really matter; some of this stuff still feels all too real to me. Especially the bad stuff.

But, I managed to pick one of the less horrible things that happened last year. That’s not hard to do, especially in the later journals, where I slacked off with the daily updates and just tried to hit the highlights. Most of these just have lists (what I ate that day, which nail polish collections I still needed to hunt down/purchase, trying to narrow down Peg’s birthday wish list to something I could afford), but there is an occasional actual entry.

I opened my random journal to a random page and started reading about the first time I met Ducky. 

I knew who he was, but I had no idea he actually knew me. I knew him because the day after Mrs. Kruger’s party, he came to my house to pick up Dawn and Sunny to take them back to the scene of the crime to find Sunny’s wallet. He scared me the first time I saw him – or I guess I should say, his car did. It was more rust than anything else, and even though I was mad at my friends, I worried about them getting into that death trap with a strange boy.

They survived, thank goodness, and Ducky started hanging out with them more and more. It was so weird – at first. The actual high-schoolers wanted nothing to do with us eighth graders, so for the longest time Ducky was the only one of them who braved being seen with us (in public, at least). But as the other kids got used to us being there, there was more mingling between the classes. 

There was something else that made Ducky’s friendship with them weird, though. His hanging out with Maggie and my former friends made _me_ even cooler in my new friends’ eyes. Like, I was somehow cool by proxy. (Six degrees of coolness separation?) I didn’t know why. Whenever I’d ask my friends, they’d just start blushing and giggling and saying, “Oh, _you know_.”

But I _didn’t_ know, or else I wouldn’t have been asking!

Anyway – where was I? Oh, yeah, the day when Ducky and I actually met.

It was an April afternoon at the beach. The water had finally warmed up enough to do some serious surfing, and I was dying to get some alone time, away from Peg and Terri and Jenn. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great, but it can be a little stifling to be around them all the time. I’ve never been the cool one in a group, but I am to them and – well, that’s another story. The point is, I was at the beach, catching some waves with my fellow surfers – and Sunny.

I mean, I couldn’t avoid Sunny even if I’d wanted to. We go to the same school, after all, and we’re in the same class. I tried to stay away from her as much as I could, though, especially since her mother had just died. She hadn’t spotted me when she’d ran out into the water after arriving with Maggie, Amalia, and Ducky, but I was pretty conscious of her, so I just moved further down the beach to keep my distance. I kept getting the feeling that I was being watched, though, and sure enough, when I looked up, I realized that Ducky was looking at me with this strange expression on his face.

Oh man did I feel weird. At least it was just him – Maggie and Amalia were off somewhere else; he was just sitting on their blanket by himself, watching me. I tried to ignore him, but I couldn’t, and I had a hard time concentrating on the waves. I remember being angry about that, and stomping up onto the beach, dragging my board along beside me, and then Ducky just sort of – _pounced_.

Rereading the conversation now – and knowing Ducky as well as I do now – I have to laugh, but I was in no laughing mood when he approached me that afternoon. I pretty much bit his head off, but to his credit he didn’t run screaming in the opposite direction. I asked him how he knew who I was (he’d called me by name) and he admitted that Maggie had told him about me. “All good, I hope,” I’d replied glumly, and he’d actually replied, “Yeah.” And smiled.

Which gave me a tiny bit of hope. Maggie and I hadn’t talked to each other in ages, and she was hanging out with Sunny so much that I was half-convinced she hated me because Sunny hated me. When Ducky said otherwise, it gave me hope that maybe she didn’t.

We had a nice conversation that day. He admitted that he wanted to talk to me because he wanted to make up his own mind about me after hearing conflicting stuff from Sunny and Maggie. We had sodas at the Snack Shack and talked a bit about our mutual(?) friends. When he mentioned how worried he was about Maggie because she was dropping so much weight so fast, it was just – an epiphany. I was _so_ glad that I wasn’t the only one concerned about her, and it just all sort of came rushing out – how much she’d changed since 7th grade, how close we used to be, my own worries and fears for her, how much I missed her and Sunny and Dawn and the friendship we all used to have. I told him about the We ♥ Kids Club and the article in the paper and the crazy publicity and some of our clients, who I still baby-sat for on occasion. I even told him about the Baby-sitters Club, which our club had been modeled very loosely on.

He’s so easy to talk to – almost as weird as he is to look at. He has the most incredible eyes, though, big and round and wide, and it’s just like he’s soaking you in with them. I could definitely see why the other girls had flocked to him, and even why Peg and Terri and Jenn were half in love with him. It made me feel very wistful, because I wished I could be his friend, too.

Sunny’s murderous expression when she found us pretty much killed any hope I had for that, or so I thought. 

I was even more surprised when Ducky sought me out the next day after school, and offered to drive me home. I wasn’t ready to risk the death trap, but it was really nice of him to ask. He didn’t push it. And it was like…he was giving me this really subtle signal, that he was willing to be my friend even though he was Sunny’s friend and it was really obvious how much she disliked me.

As I re-read my entries now, I see that I never really fell off Ducky’s radar. He’d never been off mine – for all that I tried to insert myself into Maggie’s friendship with Amalia, I couldn’t NOT be aware of Ducky as well. But he started acknowledging me in the halls and at assemblies and stuff at school, and sometimes we’d run into each other at the beach. When it was just us, we’d sit and talk and stare out into the ocean; when he was with Maggie or Sunny or Amalia, he’d just sort of nod in my direction like he did at school. I liked it when we were able to talk. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt comfortable around a boy. Plus he kinda kept me updated on my friends. It was nice to hear that Sunny was doing better with her mom’s death, and that Dawn had made peace with her stepmother, and that Maggie had turned the corner with her eating disorder.

It was Ducky that brought Maggie and me back together, in a really roundabout way. He’s also really interested in pop culture and celebrities, but somehow he manages to be way more cool about it that I am. Like, I still sometimes get star-struck by the people who just _drop by_ Maggie’s house, and I can’t just – _not_ react. Maggie used to be able to shrug it off, but last year she started getting a real chip on her shoulder about it. We used to be able to page through magazines and stuff together, but when she became so sensitive about every little mention of a famous name, it was just one less thing we had in common.

Anyway. When the mags started to run with the rumor that Tyler Kendall was going to be in Mr. Blume’s new movie, it was all I could do not to run straight to Maggie and pump her for information. Tyler Kendall has to be one of THE most gorgeous teen actors ever, and I was dying over even the idea of only having 2-3 degrees of separation from him. I’d lay on my bed for hours just daydreaming about what it would be like to meet him. Not only is he good-looking, but he seemed so kind and nice, not arrogant or cynical like some child actors. He was new to show business and was just so…fresh.

Sigh. Tyler Kendall crept into a _lot_ of my spring journal entries, especially after Ducky confirmed the rumors and told me that Felicia Hope was also slated for the movie. I really _did_ die then, I think, or at least went temporarily insane. There’s a whole page in my journal that’s nothing but hearts, rows and rows of hearts in lots of different colors.

When Peg and Terri and Jenn found out, they all begged me to ask Maggie to get us autographs. It’s not something I’d normally do, especially knowing how sensitive Maggie is about celebrities, but I couldn’t resist Tyler Kendall’s magical smile. I don’t know how anyone can, really. I managed to put my friends off a few days, but they practically dragged me over to Maggie’s table in the cafeteria one day and then, well, I just had to ask. 

Sometimes Maggie can be really cynical and jaded, and this was one of those times. She acted completely unimpressed by Tyler, and Amalia and her other friends were rolling their eyes about it. That sort of made me mad – how could they act all superior towards me and Peg and Terri and Jenn, it’s not like they’re older or more mature than us – and I sort of dug in my heels, but it was nice to have the support of my friends. It wasn’t until after I’d stuck my magazine in the handle of Maggie’s locker that afternoon that I started to feel a teensy bit embarrassed by the whole thing. I knew better than to push her, but I kinda felt like she’d pushed me into it with her dismissive attitude.

Later, I told Ducky what had happened, and asked him to apologize to her for me, and he just patted my shoulder and told me that I wasn’t being silly or stupid, which _did_ make me feel better. Still, I felt uncomfortable about the whole situation. 

I wasn’t upset when Maggie didn’t bother to return the magazine.


	7. September 23

9/23 – Saturday morning, after breakfast

I had a whole journal dedicated to Tyler Kendall at the end of last year. Re-reading the entries made me want to break out my stash of magazines, and well, I guess that’s how well I know myself. I made lists of all of the articles about him in the various magazines (Peg and Terri and Jenn were very helpful with that!), and I cut things out of the newspaper and pasted them directly into the journal. It sort of looks like one of my kindergarten collages, except it’s only in black and white.

There’s an entire entry dedicated to the gossip column that featured Tyler and Maggie’s first date. I really dissected it, which seems sort of silly now, but I do remember the intense excitement I felt when I stumbled across it. I wanted to share it with the world, but at the same time I didn’t. The more I looked at it and read it, the more I realized that it was sort of like invading their privacy. They certainly didn’t look happy in the accompanying picture, but it was like – that discomfort vs the sheer excitement of being photographed _on a date **with Tyler Kendall**_!!! Even though I was trying not to get on Maggie’s bad side, I couldn’t resist asking her about it the next day at school.

She was _so_ upset about it. And really, I couldn’t blame her – it was a private moment that suddenly the whole world shared. I thought about what it would’ve been like to have the entire world know _my_ personal business, and it shook me up for a couple of days.

Maggie must’ve talked to her dad about it, because that was the last feature on them in the newspaper.

I don’t know what happened, or how, but somehow Ducky managed to get me invited to the _Love Conquers All_ set as an extra! I was SO surprised when Maggie invited me. I figured she was still mad at me for telling her about the gossip column, but somehow, she wasn’t. I attribute it all to Ducky, because he was the only mutual friend we had at the time. She made me swear not to tell my new friends about the invitation, and I didn’t. It was hard, but I managed to keep my lips zipped until after the fact.

The day we spent on set was actually pretty boring. It was exciting to actually meet Tyler Kendall in the flesh – ooh, it still gives me goosebumps, just thinking about it! – but there wasn’t much to do. We sat around a lot. That was our job on camera, but there wasn’t much of that. It was really awkward, but Ducky was really nice to me, and it was the first time I had the chance to really talk to Amalia and her friend Brendan, and make a good impression on them. It wasn’t until later that I realized that Maggie had spent the day elsewhere on the set, and I had to wait until the very end of the evening to talk to her again. I thanked her a bunch more times for inviting me to come with her, and hugged her, and she hugged me back, and it was really nice. It felt like we were friends again, like we’d found that magical spark that had brought us together back in first grade again.

She was so _happy_. I found out later it’s because she was with Tyler, which just made me even happier for her. After all she went through last year, she deserved to be happy, and it was great to have a glimpse of the old her again.


	8. September 27

9/27 – Tuesday evening, after dinner

Hmm. I’ve been re-reading these entries from last year – and the last couple of weeks – and I realize now that I somehow managed to be introspective without even realizing it. It was hard to go back to the beginning of the year and read about losing all of my friends all over again, and how hard it was to adjust to being a high-schooler while still in the eighth grade. I never particularly want to do that again, and hopefully will have enough interesting things happen between now and senior year that by the time we have to write our senior class wills and testaments, it will just be a teeny tiny memory not even worthy of reexamining.

What’s become clear to me now is just how much I consider Maggie my best friend, and how much of last year I spent trying to make sure we stayed best friends. I still consider her my best friend, even if she doesn’t. We’ve been friends forever, and I think we always will be, even if we’re not as close as we used to be. I still feel like I can tell her things I can’t share with Peg or Terri or Jenn, and I’m really grateful that I can still spend time with her, even if Dawn and Sunny want nothing to do with me.

I lost my friend group from middle school, but I found a new one in high school. Peg and Terri and Jenn are like my new We ♥ Kids Club. I’m the only one who actually baby-sits, but we are the same sort of tight-knit circle I used to have with Maggie and Dawn and Sunny. I really needed that last year, and I guess I still need it. It’s nice to have support.

I’m pretty proud to be friends with Ducky, and I’m grateful to him for a lot of things. He helped me repair my friendship with Maggie, and he listened to me when nobody else would. He understands things my girl friends don’t. He’s been through a lot, and I sense that he’s really sad inside, but I’m still really glad to count him as a new friend. I never thought I’d be friends with a boy – _real_ friends. Now, if only all of the dreamboats could be so nice…!

I think I know what I’m going to write about for my essay. My first year as a high-schooler was really hard, and not always fun, but I got through it, and I think I’m a stronger person for it. Looking back, I can see myself growing up, even in the really bad moments. I hope that every year of high school isn’t like this (the awful parts, at least), but I think if it was, maybe I could handle it. Maybe that’s what the teachers want to read about. Maybe that’s why they assign the dreaded Freshman Essay.

I’m going to ask Liz and Ducky about it. If I’m right, then I know what I’m going to write. It’s practically half-drafted in this journal already.


	9. September 28

9/28 – Wednesday, English class

I love being right ♥ Ran into Ducky this morning before homeroom, and he confirmed what Liz told me last night on the phone re: the essay. Going to start drafting it tonight.

Outline:  
Opening line: “The hardest thing about eighth grade was losing my best friend.”  
How/when/why Maggie & I drifted apart, and my efforts to stop it  
Enter Ducky  
 _Love Conquers All_ \+ the friendship it saved


	10. October 10

10/10 – Tuesday morning, homeroom

I finished my final draft of the Freshman Essay over the weekend, and I let Liz read it while she was home for the holiday. I kinda avoided her while she had it, because I was nervous about what she would say. I also wanted to get in one last good beach day before it got too cold to surf again. I’m glad I had my new wetsuit – it kept me nice and warm while I was hitting the waves. Plus it looks great with my favorite pink surfboard! And the weekend was topped off by finally finding the LE fall collection from Revlon, with its beautiful jewel toned polishes. I’m wearing the purple glitter over black and my mani looks amazing. I can’t take my eyes off it!

I didn’t see Liz before she left this morning, but she left me a long note with the draft of my essay. It was really sweet. Beyond the typo corrections and punctuation suggestions, she basically told me how proud she was of being my sister, and how strong I’d become after going through the horror that was eighth grade. She said it was hard for her, being away at school and not being able to help me through it, but that in the end, having to go it alone really helped me. I’ve looked up to her for so long that reading the note made me cry. _She_ was always the strong one, not me.

The final version of my essay is due today, and I’m a little nervous about turning it in. I don’t know that I _want_ Mr. Sandstone to know this much about me…but I guess at the same time, I’m proud of it. Not only of surviving last year, but actually being introspective without really thinking about it and managing to complete the assignment without completely freaking out. Once I got into it, it wasn’t as horrible as I’d thought. Thank God.

~*~

10/10 – Tuesday, English class

Well, there it goes. I just passed my essay up with the rest of the pile to Tom Swanson, and Mr. Sandstone took them and put them in a big pile beside his briefcase. He said he’d have them all graded by the end of next week. He also reminded us that it’s worth one quarter of our entire course grade.

Gulp.


	11. October 20

10/20 – Friday night

2 pieces of good news!

_From the desk of: Mr. Sandstone_

_Very nice work, Jill. The English department was especially interested in the freshman essays this year because of the upheaval your class faced in moving to the high school building as eighth graders. You describe your tumultuous journey with clear, thoughtful insight. I was quite happy to read that you were able to repair and strengthen your friendship with your best friend, and all that you’ve learned from that experience. Truly, this was a pleasure to read._

_Grade: A_

I ran into Maggie and Ducky and Amalia this afternoon at the mall, and we ended up seeing a movie and treating ourselves at Starburst’s afterwards. After re-reading (and re-living) the trauma of last year, I felt like I appreciated being with them even _more_ because of what we went through. And I guess maybe they feel the same way, because Amalia invited me to her Halloween party! I even got to help her plan it a little bit – we all just started hashing ideas right there at the table. Maggie mentioned what a whiz I was with costumes, and how I’d helped her and Dawn and Sunny plan their elaborate costumes back in the W ♥ KC days, and Ducky jokingly asked me what I was thinking of going as this year.

Maybe Joan of Arc? =)


End file.
